Project Babbage is an effort to construct a Turing-complete mechanical computer out of Lego Technic parts (gears, axles, etc.) This is a companion site to the project, providing documentation of it as well as general information about the workings of computing machines and their history. The goal of this (other than the fact that it's really, really cool) is to remind people that computers are not magical mystery boxes, and to show that anyone can understand them.
The actual building project will consist of the following stages:
Create mechanical equivalents of p-type and n-type transistors, or 'kinesistors'
Use the kinesistors to implement various types of logic gates (AND, OR, XOR, NOT)
Design a ripple-carry adder/subtracter and a shifter/rotator
Create a multiplexer and a demultiplexer
Make registers for memory
Design a control unit with a clock and program reader
Create an input/output mechanism
Link the components together to create a transport trigger architecture (TTA)
The actual building project will consist of the following stages: